https://www.ctpost.com/news/article/bridgeport-ct-reval-taxes-2026-21256884.php
BRIDGEPORT – If you are a homeowner in Connecticut’s largest municipality, chances are your real estate’s value has spiked as much as 68 percent or so over the last five years.
That is the preliminary conclusion of the state-mandated 2025 property revaluation, based on sales data and conducted by Municipal Valuation Services LLC in neighboring Fairfield.
“The housing increased fairly dramatically,” confirmed William Gaffney, Bridgeport’s interim assessor, with most commercial properties also up.
“If the average residential is 68 percent, the average commercial might be 60 or 62 percent,” said Finance Director Kenneth Flatto.
Which is theoretically great for anyone planning to sell. But what about homeowners who are sitting tight? Does that positive jump in values mean a cringe-worthy increase in their real estate taxes next year?
That question will not truly be answered until the conclusion of the spring 2026 budget season when Mayor Joe Ganim and the City Council agree on a new fiscal plan to run government and set an annual tax – also called mill – rate. That figure has stood at 43.45 since 2021.
Although individual circumstances may differ, Flatto said, “My hope and goal would be … to help the mayor and council to manage a process that, at the end of the day, the average homeowner will not see any significant increase in taxes (and) most will be relatively stable with their tax bills.”
Key word being average.
A big reason for his confidence is that the positive revaluation results equal grand list growth. The grand list is the total value of all taxable real estate, commercial equipment and motor vehicles and is released early each year.
Municipalities want to see local grand lists on the rise, particularly from new developments coming online and businesses opening, which is a sign of economic health and allows officials to spread out the property tax burden needed to pay for government services.
As James Mohs, associate professor of accounting with the University of New Haven, explained, “Budget divided by grand list equals mill rate. Mill rate times evaluation gives you your property tax.”
Bridgeport’s 2024 grand list was calculated to be $8.02 billion, down slightly from 2023’s $8.16 billion, which itself was relatively flat. In stark contrast Flatto estimated the 2025 figure could increase by about $5 billion to $13 billion and change.
“When the grand list goes up the mill rate should have some drop and they should be close to offsetting each other,” Flatto explained.
Thus, keeping tax bills relatively steady – as long as city officials are careful when crafting the 2026-27 municipal budget this coming spring. Even before any discretionary spending is added in, that document, which Ganim proposes to the City Council in early April, will typically start off higher than the current fiscal year’s because of inflation and union-negotiated benefits.
“It’s a good thing if the grand list goes up,” emphasized Mohs. “That doesn’t give them carte blanch to go out and spend a lot of money if they don’t have to. … It does give them a little flexibility.”
Flatto agreed.
“While the budget may have slight flexibility… we don’t know what the costs look like in the budget yet. (Or) the revenue stream,” he said, referring to non-tax monies like federal and state grants, plus categories like municipal building permit and other fees and various types of fines.
Jeanette Herron is the new president of the 20-person council, all Democrats like Ganim. She too wants to keep taxes “as low as possible” given the other financial pressures residents are facing to ensure they can still afford to remain in Bridgeport.
“We’ve been told the mill rate is going to come down,” Herron said. “I can’t tell you the numbers. … We are requesting a meeting right after the holiday with the finance director to see what those may look like.”
Ganim took office in late 2015, just in time for the conclusion of that year’s property revaluation. Those results were not great for the grand list issued in early 2016, reducing it from $7 billion to $6 billion. Ganim had campaigned on not raising taxes but that spring hiked the rate from the 42.1 mills it had been under predecessor Bill Finch to 54.37 mills.
There was a resultant intense public outcry from some of the harder-hit neighborhoods like Black Rock, with angry protestors packing a few council meetings.
The city’s tax rate has slowly decreased since that time to the current 43.45 amount.
Meanwhile Bridgeport’s grand list received a significant boost from the last revaluation in 2020, climbing from $6.4 billion to $7.99 billion, because the city experienced a real estate boom during the height of the global COVID pandemic with residents from New York City and elsewhere fleeing their more crowded urban living situations for Connecticut.
Gaffney said the results of the 2025 revaluation prove that Bridgeport remains a desirable destination post-COVID.
“A lot of persons are interested, coming in, buying properties,” he said. “Retail (sites) looked like it went up. Condos went up. Multis (multi-family homes) went up. Even vacant land went up.”
But just-retired Councilman Scott Burns, who co-chaired the legislative body’s budget committee, said he has long been concerned about a double-edged sword.
“That people are coming in, buying these homes at to me very high prices, and it’s across the city,” Burns said. “I’m seeing and hearing a lot of price increases and it could make life difficult. If you cut the mill rate significantly, you still could end up with a reasonably high tax bill.”
“I would definitely not want people to think, 'Oh, the grand list is way up, so my taxes are going to come way down,” Burns continued. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
For more information on Bridgeport’s 2025 revaluation, visit Revaluation Information | City of Bridgeport.
{“uri”:“ctpost.com”,“dataType”:“news”,“title”:“CTPost”,“description”:“CTPost: Local News & Information, Updated Weather, Traffic, Entertainment, Celebrity News, Sports Scores and More.”}ctpost.com